The Spring Between Us

h the lantern in his hand

ack after him with my heart in my throat. The sky over the eastern rim had gone from ink to a thin grey, enough light to see the shape of things, the bou

said. "Not my patrol. Mine

gue

pack house unless they are hungry or paid."

your spring house while some

here and sta

the warm water dripping, and my own breathing, which was too fast. I made myself slow it. My mother used to s

nd two days, and I still measured time by it

up and there she was with her sleeves rolled and her grey eyes on the gauge. She had been Luna of the Kızıltaş pack for nineteen years. She had taken it from her own mother, who had taken it from hers, and she had held it thro

"The gauge is down another inch. That i

creek bed is

rank her coffee and looked out at the mesa. "I want you to ride th

sou

nd her grey eyes, which were the same grey as the sandstone in the low light, went somewhere else for a moment. "If an

ld happen

o be a very old woman and a great nuisance to you an

he heat the whole way and made me laugh twice, and we came back at dusk to find the pack hou

and she had gone over the edge and broken her neck in the fall. It was Ruth who told me, Ruth who rode out with the search party, Ruth who bro

a fall, and there was a funeral to arrange and a pack to hold and forty wolves looking

er round face gone the color of old paper, and she sat on the end of my

a small sound. I remember that the floorboards in my mother's room had a kno

oken before the fall, or near enough. I did not want to say

else

re shaking in her lap. "Ruth asked me twice whether I had found

ng and the ordinary evening sounds of the pack house went on around us, and my mother was in th

ira said. "Not y

ot to

p and picked up her bag, and at the door she stopped. "Your mother came to see me four days before she died. She asked me how much

he bed until the candle burned

about wolfsbane, and Mira's voice telling me about rope, and Ruth's careful voice at every meal saying the canyon has gone dry before, and

Make sure nobody sees you. When the Çöl pack is sick, we will go to the Council and ask for a water share as a mercy, and they will grant it,

at her cold grey

n years. Ruth had ridden out with the search party. Ruth had brought her body back. I had no proof that Ruth had done anything except be useful, and in the three weeks since the funeral she had been ve

d me to do as Luna. I told myself I was taking it to the borde

I had been awake for most of six days, and there is a kind of tired that makes a person very simple. I think I would h

tin cup in his hand and looked at me like weat

d not come ov

me back with nothing but a story about a dead mule deer and a coyote that had been at it. The howling had been a warning, maybe, or a mistake

gold that comes before the sun. "Ride the creek bed south and come up on your mesa from the fa

per? The wa

set down in numbered lines, a share of the spring for the Kızıltaş pack in exchange for labor on the spring house and a p

than I asked

ed in the grey light until it was only a pale curve, but it wa

s not

ithout heat. "I will not touch you again unless you ask me to. But you should know that I am not going

easier than looking at him. "And what does the

hing she can against you. So we keep it quiet and we think, and we do not let Ruth find out before we are ready." He picked up

had not told him anything about my m

of my head. He was not looking at me anymore. He was looking past my shoulder, down the w

irst, only the shape of the animal and the long shadow it threw ahead of it. Then the horse came around the last boulder and I s

me, and her face did the thing I had seen it do a hundred times at the p

not come back to the pack house I was so afraid something had happened to you out her